Object lesson: The Living End
George Nakashima (1905– 1990) beside a pile of flitch-sawn lumber air-drying on sticks, in a photograph by William Holland, 1960. Photograph courtesy of George Nakashima Woodworkers, Bucks County, Pennsylvania. The revered American studio craftsman George Nakashima famously said that, in the furniture he designed and made, he sought to reveal “the soul of a tree.” He did so by celebrating wood with vivid grains that other designers might have regarded as distracting imperfections and, most significantly, by leaving alone the natural contours of the tree trunk from which a slab of wood was cut—creating tables, his best-known furniture form, with what he called a “free edge.” Today, the term most frequently employed to describe such furniture is “live edge,” and, some thirty-two years after Nakashima’s death, his spirit is very much alive itself. Not only is the Nakashima Studio in New Hope, Pennsylvania thriving under the leadership of daughter Mira Nakashima, herself a deeply respected designer, but a new generation of craftspeople has embraced his philosophy and exacting approach to joinery. Even larger scale furniture making operations now create faux live edges using sophisticated cutting devices to simulate the natural profile of a tree. Make what you will of the latter development— is it egalitarian, or merely mercenary?—the wide appeal of live-edge furniture is a remarkable example of how even the most eccentric design idioms can become embraced and even beloved by the public at large. George Nakashima let a tree talk, and the world listened. King-size headboard made by Nakashima, 1960. American black walnut; height 38, width 80, depth 3 inches. Except as noted, photographs are courtesy of Moderne Gallery, Philadelphia. Nakashima’s story has been often told but bears repeating. Born in Spokane, Washington in 1905, the first-generation son of Japanese immigrants, he entered the University